Zied ALAYA proposed the following answer:
Generally, we have the latest softwares in every release of Ubuntu.
Some times there is no enough time to add and test some softwares.
indeed the hole system can became instable since there is dependency
for other packages.
that’s why for example in Ubuntu 8.10 open office 3 wasn’t included.

If I understand the Ubuntu release cycle, they mostly base their distro
on debian unstable, and polish/upgrade only packages in ‘main’ (the
ubuntu main).

Other packages mostly are the version found in debian unstable/testing.
Debian Lenny, unstable when jaunty started it’s release cycle, was
frozen, and had version 0.17.0, so Jaunty just used that.

Note that Lenny is also using 0.17.0, unfortunately.

Version 0.17.0 clearly deserves an update in stable distros. It has an
important memory leak which renders all ruby-gnome2 based programs
useless after a few memory-related operations. If an update can’t be
afforded, at least a downgrade to 0.16.0 (unless you’re using ruby >=
1.8.7) should be considered.

Version 0.17.0 clearly deserves an update in stable distros. It has an
important memory leak which renders all ruby-gnome2 based programs
useless after a few memory-related operations. If an update can’t be
afforded, at least a downgrade to 0.16.0 (unless you’re using ruby >=
1.8.7) should be considered.

Didn’t realize it was so bad… I think I’d better start telling
users to install from the updated packages on the wiki then.

If I understand the Ubuntu release cycle, they mostly base their distro
on debian unstable, and polish/upgrade only packages in ‘main’ (the
ubuntu main).